Manipulation

How to spell manipulation

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce manipulation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does manipulation mean?

1. nounThe act of controlling or influencing a person, situation, or set of facts in a clever or unscrupulous way.
2. nounSkilled handling or operation of something with the hands, as of objects, tissues, or controls.

Manipulation in a sentence

• The report exposed years of financial manipulation by senior staff.

• The physiotherapist used gentle manipulation to ease the stiff joint.

• Emotional manipulation left her doubting her own memory of events.

• Careful manipulation of the controls kept the crane steady.

Where does manipulation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin manipulus, which literally meant 'a handful' and was built from manus, meaning 'hand', combined with a root related to filling. In Roman military life a manipulus was also a company of soldiers, said to have once carried a bundle of straw on a pole as their standard. From this came the French manipulation, a term that eighteenth-century chemists and pharmacists used for the skilled handling of substances and apparatus. English borrowed it in the late 1700s in exactly that technical sense of working something with the hands, and only later did it pick up the figurative meaning of cunningly influencing people or facts. The buried 'hand' in manus is a useful spelling anchor: the word opens with 'man', and the often-skipped 'u' in the '-ipul-' middle is the trap that catches careful writers.

How the word is built

• man- (from manus: hand)
• -ipul- (from manipulus: handful)
• -ation (noun of action)